Bernie Sanders supporters are exactly the hipster ragemonkeys that embody the Bernie Bros stereotype. Note the constant references to Williamsburg, the Lower East Side and Silver Lake, and the faux edginess and childish tantrums.
Where Obama at least managed to overlay the Ben Rhodes/Tommy Vietor bunch with people who couldn’t be found pretending to write a novel at Starbucks while really tweeting about how angry the latest Mother Jones article on corporations made them, this is the Bernie base. And it ain’t playing too well for Democrats. And it’ll play even worse when it debuts in Middle America.
Bearded 20-somethings smoked actual cigarettes outside and discussed the difference in rental prices between Silver Lake and Williamsburg. Inside, the crowd of canvassers and campaign staffers bopped to “Common People,” the Britpop class-rage anthem by Pulp. Writers from New York magazine, as well as leftwing publications like Jacobin and n+1, sidled up to the bar and got down to discussing labor rights.
A “class-rage” anthem for trust fund babies paying $3,500 a month for 800 square feet.
And if this weren’t punchable enough…
The show’s hosts gathered in a tiny and graffiti-covered back room that looked like a charming imitation of a Lower East Side dive bar bathroom and discussed their candidate’s chances in the caucuses and whether one could get HBO interested in a miniseries starring Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. Out on the dance floor, a massive image of Jeffrey Epstein’s bungalow on Little Saint James, otherwise known as “Pedophile Island,” was being beamed onto the walls.
A charming imitation of a dive bar for trust fund babies who play at slumming it. And then there’s the creepy Pedophile Island effort to be edgy.
Oh, how divergent it all was from the scene at the Marriott, a five-minute walk away. There, at a Super Bowl viewing party held by Bloomberg News, cable news hosts like Jake Tapper and Dana Bash congregated with a small army of Politico reporters, Democratic operatives (including Pete Buttigieg’s spitfire senior advisor, Lis Smith), a coterie of staffers from the British Embassy in Washington and roughly half The New York Times masthead.
Why are British Embassy staffers in Des Moines? After Spygate, I almost don’t know want to know.
Anyway back to the usual Bernie Bros tantrums.
Another hopped on stage and grabbed a microphone for a call and return with the crowd.
“When I say ‘Fuck,’ you say ‘Biden!’”
“Fuck,” he yelled. “Biden,” the crowd roared back.
“When I say ‘Fuck,’ you say ‘Warren!’”
“Fuck,” he yelled. “Warren,” the audience answered back.
And so it went with Buttigieg, Steyer, and even Tulsi Gabbard, the poor thing.
Upshot is whoever wins the nomination will have a divided party at their back.
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